


against a sea of tribbles

by gogollescent



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, Gen, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-03
Updated: 2012-05-03
Packaged: 2017-11-04 18:43:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/397008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gogollescent/pseuds/gogollescent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Ms. Lalonde, in the subterranean lab, with the glowing purple plasma gun.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	against a sea of tribbles

It turns out that three years— even three videogame years— are not passable by picturesque montage alone: and so, in the second week of her confinement to the meteor, Rose decides to take up arms.

Eridan Ampora’s abandoned guns were made for smaller hands than hers, but she adjusts, her fingers curling in over themselves. Trolls, as a society, have apparently moved beyond bullets; the first time she points his sometime rifle at a rook’s carcass, the blast of plasma knocks her cleanly off her feet, and when she sits up there is a smoking crater in all that monstrous flesh.

Sherlock Holmes would not approve. Spelling out the initials of the queen is difficult when you’ve leveled the wall.

Her new hobby also seems to perturb Kanaya, who alternately avoids her and hovers incessantly during target practice.

“This is a very stupid game,” she says today. “Even by your execrable standards.”

Rose sights down the length of the gun. She’s thinking about the open throat of the barrel, the dark hole with its shining rim like a fish’s clear eye. Immediately before it fires, she thinks a light must gather there. As the laser powers up. It would be— something— to watch it.

If, in her anteScratch innocence, she had known that she would survive her death, she would have assumed that the dying would make her blasé about methods of murder; but actually she finds herself increasingly aware of possibilities concomitant to her godhood. The thousand lovely things that she could see.

“Did you catch the part where I called you stupid?” says Kanaya.

“Yes,” says Rose. She doesn’t have to turn to know that Kanaya is wearing blue today, the dress falling sumptuous around her thighs. Rose would like to run the toe of her pale shoe along Kanaya’s submerged calf, and let blue shadow blue. She fingers the trigger.

“Your wands were more efficacious,” Kanaya tells her, “and did not mar the line of your skirt.”

“Neither does the gun,” Rose says. “I plan to use it. Not to carry it around in a concealed holster.”

“On who?” says Kanaya.

Rose fires, and vaporizes a small vat.

“My mother kept guns,” she says, instead of answering what is clearly an unreasonable and meddlesome question. “I’m not sure if she knew that I knew; if she had, I feel sure she would have been more adamant in making me study Gandhi and MacGyver.”

“Troll MacGyver once improvised a bomb from the squealing body of a highblood grub, taking advantage of its hemo-ordained temperature to spark the fuse,” Kanaya says, absently, and then looks irritated, as if Rose has tricked her into offering up this tasteful state secret. “So what?” she finishes, shaking her head. “If they were anything like Jade’s human weapons, the guns owned by your lusus were a primitive shadow of this technology. You are making the same fundamental error as the man who tried to recapture his youth by traveling to the future and pailing with his direct genetic descendant.”

“I will, of course, keep that in mind,” says Rose. She feels extremely tired. She blows out a hot puff of air to clear her hair from her face.

Kanaya puts a hand on her shoulder. Its weight is hesitant and cool; the light of it fills her peripheral vision, at the leftmost side.

“My lusus had wings,” Kanaya says.

Rose lowers the gun. She doesn’t say anything. She works her mouth around her tongue until Kanaya wraps bare arms around her shoulders and kisses her: the open oval of her mouth cold on Rose’s lips, but warming, slowly, from the center and out. Like there’s a lightness building, in her throat.

 


End file.
